Rihanna has finally dropped new music. Before getting all excited, you should know that it’s not what you think.
After years of leaving her Navy stranded in a musical desert, she’s returned with a song... for the Smurfs. Yes, the tiny blue forest people. Not her fans. The Smurfs.
Titled a “Friend of Mine,” the new single is a dub step fever dream with the lyrical complexity of a dial tone. Throughout the entire song, there is basically one line: “feel like a friend of mine.”
Since Rihanna is voicing Smurfette in the new Smurfs movie, fans weren’t shocked that her long-awaited return to music was tied to the film. What did shock them was how aggressively terrible the song is. It’s not just “meh” bad, but horrible in a “why did she do this to us” kind of way that is now causing some of her fans to question whether the new song is all just some big prank.
Their evidence? First, the song has a single lyric that Rihanna puts on repeat.
“She was like, alright I’ll send [producers] one voice note. Good luck making it into a Smurf song,” one person joked on YouTube.
Second, why does the production on the song sound like some kind of weird AI slop creation?
“I REALLY strongly suspect they used an AI tool to replace a session singer’s voice with Rihanna’s. It really barely sounds like her,” a Redditor claimed.
Others agreed, with people pointing towards the oddly compressed vocals as the source of the issue.
“The vocal tone sounds really uncanny and not-Rihanna-like in the high notes.”
And finally, it’s just bad. There is really no other way of putting it.
Although fans have been demanding new music from Rihanna for years, maybe they should have been a little more specific about what kind.
“She said y’all want music…. here you go 😩😩😩🥹🥹🥹.”
While Smurfs may not be trolls themselves, one very blue diva is certainly out here trolling us all.
